One of the problems of having a ridiculous television logjam on Sunday nights right now is that it’s tough to cover everything of note in a timely to semi-timely manner. For example, HBO’s freshman comedy Silicon Valley, from Office Space creator Mike Judge, has been excellent, and we have barely discussed it at all. So, I’d like to take this opportunity to remedy that, sort of, by pointing out something from this Sunday’s episode that I think is worth mentioning: Big Head is living the dream right now.

Quick refresher: Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti (pictured above, on the left) is the best friend of the show’s main character, Richard Hendricks. After Richard’s file compression start-up, Pied Piper, started drawing interest from various tech big shots, much was made about whether Big Head — an average-at-best programmer and a sweet, lovable doofus — would get to stick on with the company, all of which was rendered moot when a competitor offered him a three-year contract for $600k/yr to lure him away, unaware that he brings nothing to any table, anywhere, ever. Once his new employers — Hooli, which is basically a Google/Apple hybrid — realized this, they took him off the Pied Piper competitor project they hired him to assist with, and didn’t reassign him anywhere, leaving him to roam the campus aimlessly, which is how he stumbled across these similarly situated, rudderless souls.

Long story short: The guy failed his way into a high-paying, do-nothing job where he and his buddies grill on the roof all day while drinking alcohol and/or Big Gulps. And sometimes they take a break from all that to stroll to Arby’s. That’s it! That’s their whole day! Which, by my calculations, assuming he works — “works” — 50 weeks a year, Big Head earned about $2400 for. This is everything I’ve ever wanted out of life. Hell, I’d do less work for half of that, if anyone’s interested. I’ll go even lower if you promise to put a TV on my roof-picnic paradise. We can hammer out the terms later. (NOTE: This is exactly the type of procrastination I will bring to your business if you choose to hire me.)

Anyway, the whole thing is kind of a cousin of the situation in Office Space, in which our hero advanced in his company after getting hypnotized into not caring at all about his job. But this is even better because Big Head didn’t have to pay a hypnotist, or mess around with his brain, or deal with a boss who continues to hassle him about TPS reports he has no intention of completing. He’s got carte blanche to screw around all day at work, pretty much consequence free, for the next three years, at the end of which he will have collected almost $2 million.

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I’m jealous of most fictional characters. At least the ones who sleep with supermodels, meet Alison Brie, and who (while doing a similar job to what I do) live in apartments that are 8x the size of my entire house, because, TV.

I’m not jealous of a guy with a fictional position in a company that doesn’t exist.

I have a friend who used to test games for a living. QC specialist. Yeh, there’s reports. Also, games!

Not only is Silicon Valley hilarious, I’m consistently impressed by all the details they get right, like the band of douchey brogrammers, the unflappable assistants (and the neurotic ones like Jared) and the insane, overblown parties.

Also I’m trying to make Ron LaFlamme’s “those guys are fuuuuuuuuucked” happen, so let’s get to that, internet.

There’s this whole pyramid that they teach you in the first year of pretty much every B-school (Maslow’s Hierarchy maybe?) that basically lists all of these things that someone needs to be fulfilled and happy.

The business application of the hiearchy was that it’s not always about compensation and that your employees need responsibility,respect, confidence, etc etc etc…. I kept thinking during the class that for me, enough money would make pretty much everything else in the pyramid irrelevant.

Basically BigHead is living my dream. Curious to see if he embraces is it or not.

I really, really like this show. That being said, I don’t think it’s hit its full stride yet. I hope it is allowed to mature fully, because it could be one of the greatest things Mike Judge has ever done. There’s certainly plenty of source material to play with.